Tech —

iheartradio brings Clear Channel to iPhone

First there was Pandora. Now iheartradio (iTunes link) connects your iPhone to Clear Channel stations across the US. It's a sweet little app with 20-odd stations to listen to. These range from Rock to Sports to Talk, with all the Top 40 choices you'd expect.

Unlike Pandora, iheartradio's audio is not commercial free. You'll hear the normal channel extras including local news, traffic and so forth. In an XM age, those extras may be enough to drive listeners away. You cannot skip past them.

On the downside, the interface is pretty crude. I encountered glitch after glitch just scrolling through the main station list. The list would jump and jitter, making station selection a thing almost of chance. In the playback screen, the main volume slider doesn't connect to the built-in volume keys the way Pandora does. This disconnects program volume from system volume; having two volume systems is counter-intuitive. As a note, a friend of mine just had his application rejected from App Store for tying the two together in a Pandora-like fashion. So, this defect may be due to Apple's policies rather than poor programming.

Lyric support offers a nice touch, although like album covers, actual lyrics were few and far between. When they were available, the display font was so small as to be useless. You cannot resize the lyrics. The font used is apparently "Helvetica-Way-Tiny" so wear your reading glasses.

iheartradio also offers play/pause control, but expect to wait. Delays between tapping the pause button and audio resuming were often upwards of 5-10 seconds on a WiFi connection. The first few times I tried restarting music, I assumed I did something wrong until I caught onto the delay issues. Make sure to tap the play icon and then wait; don't tap it again. Eventually, hopefully, playback will start—or the continents will slowly drift back to their Pangaea formations. Your mileage will vary.

In the end, I like the idea of iheartradio a lot more than the execution. Some of the stations are great; others aren't. There are lots of commercials; the extras are minimal. For now, both the software and service are free. You get what you pay for.